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菩薩善戒經

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Text ID
KR6n0004
Date
431–431
Dynasty
劉宋

Púsà shànjiè jīng 菩薩善戒經

Sūtra on the Bodhisattva’s Excellent Discipline by 求那跋摩 (Qiúnàbámó / Guṇavarman, 譯)

About the work

A nine-fascicle parallel translation of the Bodhisattvabhūmi — i.e. the Púsà dì 菩薩地 of the Yogācārabhūmi (KR6n0001) — produced by the Kashmiri master 求那跋摩 Guṇavarman (367–431) at Jiànkāng 建康 (the Liú-Sòng 劉宋 capital) in the very last year of his life (Yuánjiā 元嘉 8 = 431 CE). It is the standard South-China counterpart to Dharmakṣema’s Northern Liáng Púsà dìchí jīng (KR6n0003, T30n1581) and a key witness in the textual history of the Bodhisattvabhūmi in China. A separate one-fascicle abridgment (KR6n0005, T30n1583) covering only the Púsàdì jièběn (the bodhisattva-precepts proper) is also attributed to Guṇavarman.

Structural Division

CANWWW (T30N1582) lists the related-text chain: KR6n0001 Yúqié shī dì lùn 瑜伽師地論 (T30n1579, Púsà dì); KR6n0003 Púsà dìchí jīng 菩薩地持經 (T30n1581); KR6n0005 Púsà shànjiè jīng 菩薩善戒經 (T30n1583, abridged).

Abstract

求那跋摩 (Guṇavarman, “Virtue-Armour”), a prince of Kashmir who renounced his throne for the saṅgha and travelled via Sri Lanka and Java to South China, arrived at the Liú-Sòng court in 431 at the invitation of Emperor Wén 宋文帝. According to his biography in the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (KR2m0017 T2059, j. 3), he completed the translation of the Púsà shànjiè jīng shortly before his death later that same year at the Jǐyuánsì 祇洹寺 in Jiànkāng. The Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145) and Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (T2154) both confirm the date.

The work parallels Dharmakṣema’s KR6n0003 in covering the substance of the Bodhisattvabhūmi, but it is structured slightly differently — Guṇavarman organises the material into thirty pǐn 品 distributed across the nine juǎn, opening with a Xù pǐn 序品 (Preface) and followed by Púsà dì pǐn 菩薩地品 (Bodhisattva stage), Fā pútíxīn pǐn 發菩提心品 (Generating bodhicitta), and so on. The two versions differ in technical vocabulary and in the rendering of certain bodhisattva-precept formulae, providing an early example of the doctrinal-linguistic variation among different translation lineages of a single Indic source.

T1582 was widely copied and circulated in the Liáng-Chén period and became the basis of the LiúSòng tradition of bodhisattva-vinaya. It is repeatedly quoted in KR6n0013 (Huìyuǎn’s Dìchí lùn yìjì) and in the early Tang Cí’ēn commentaries.

Translations and research

  • Demiéville, Paul. “À propos du concile de Vaiśālī.” T’oung Pao 40 (1951): 239–296. (Discusses Guṇavarman’s translation activity.)
  • Wogihara, Unrai, ed. Bodhisattvabhūmi. Tokyo, 1930–1936.
  • Engle, Artemus B., trans. The Bodhisattva Path to Unsurpassed Enlightenment. Boulder: Snow Lion, 2016.
  • Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Rikuchō zui-tō Bukkyō tenseki to bunken kenkyū. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 2013. (Comparative material on Dharmakṣema, Guṇavarman, and Xuánzàng.)
  • Cabezón, José Ignacio. “Vasubandhu’s Vyākhyāyukti on the Authenticity of the Mahāyāna.” In Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed. Jeffrey R. Timm, 221–243. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992.

Other points of interest

Guṇavarman is one of only a handful of Chinese-canon translators who can be securely assigned a precise translation date (431), making the textual stratification of T1582 unusually firm. He is also the principal Indian transmitter of the bhikṣuṇī lineage to South China, having ordained the first Sinhalese-trained Chinese nuns at the Jǐyuánsì shortly before completing T1582.

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